This is probably the question I got asked the most by industry folks. How did you get it to blow up? Obviously the first piece of advice is to have something that's good (hope that doesn't come off as conceited). Beyond that I think there are a couple reasons this film had the legs it did.

Florida Film Festival

First, and I didn't realize it until after it started picking up steam, Mr. Gold is a very sharable film. It's about a local celebrity barely anyone knows a thing about. Thousands of people know who Mr. Gold is. On top of that the film is an uplifting/feel good piece. There isn't a lot you can argue with in the film. It's not divisive. You end up rooting for Jose in the end. I think it's natural that people want to share these kinds of stories, especially nowadays.

While those things are important I knew they wouldn't be enough to give Mr. Gold the kind of reach I wanted it to have. After reading a really good blog post on how to promote your short film I sat down and sketched out a marketing plan. I have a cousin who's a great writer and I asked him to write up a press release. I pulled frames from the film so bloggers/publications would have pictures if they wanted to run the piece. I spent days researching people, companies, and websites who may want to see the film.

After doing all this I put my plan into motion early on a Monday morning. I chose Monday because I wanted the film to pick up steam throughout the week and knew things would pretty much die out over the weekend, making it harder for the film to pick up steam again. So on a Monday morning I sent out an ungodly amount of tweets to website curators, bloggers, publications, etc. Here's an example of the tweet I sent:

Understanding that blogs want your content I emailed to tell them about the story in hopes they would want to feature it. I also sent them the press release and the pictures in case they wanted to use them as well. I also reached to local news and radio stations, the newspaper, and websites who have previously featured my work. All in all I reached out to over 100 people over several days.

One of my main goals was to get the film featured on Short of the Week and/or Vimeo Staff Picks, knowing one of these would propel the films reach. Short of the Week liked my film but ultimately decided not to run it because they felt it was too short for their audience and they wanted to know more about Jose (fair enough). Vimeo Staff Picks did pick it up and from that point on people started reaching out to me offering distribution (which I turned down) and wanting to know more about Jose.

Going the film festival route hadn't crossed my mind. It wasn't until after the dust settled that I thought festivals could be a good idea, the film had obviously struck a cord with people. I entered about 20 festivals and so far have been a featured selection in 4 as well as winning a Gold Addy award (they're like the Oscars for the advertising world). I'm still waiting to hear back from several film festivals.

Our local public radio station did a piece on Mr. Gold.

And I was on the news!

I cleared a whole week out of my schedule so I could focus solely on promoting the film. It was a lot of work but the result was worth it. For my next film I hope to do some of the promotion and possibly hire someone to help with the task.

I'm pretty excited with how this all turned out. Since it's completion I've received several offers from ad agencies about doing some work for them. We'll see what comes next...